Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP/PAP) is Haiti's principal gateway, serving Port-au-Prince from the suburb of Tabarre on the Cul-de-Sac Plain. It offers a single long hard-surfaced runway with an ILS on one approach direction, but operations here have been repeatedly disrupted in recent years by gang violence and security closures, making current status essential reading before any flight.
Toussaint Louverture International Airport, known to locals as the Maïs-Gâté airport after the district in which it stands, is Haiti's busiest airport and the main international gateway to Port-au-Prince. It has historically served as an operating hub for Sunrise Airways and hosts cargo and general aviation traffic alongside scheduled passenger services, though for a simulator pilot its chief interest lies in its long single runway, its full instrument approach, and the turbulent recent history that has repeatedly closed and reopened it.
The airport lies in Tabarre, a commune of Port-au-Prince, in the Ouest Department of Haiti, on the Cul-de-Sac Plain to the northeast of the city centre, roughly six miles from downtown Port-au-Prince. It is served by area and approach control as well as an aerodrome tower, with approach and departure control, area control and tower frequencies all published for the field, reflecting its role as Haiti's principal controlled airport.
The airport has a single physical runway, 10/28, measuring 10,051 feet with a hard surface and runway lighting. The approach to runway 10 is equipped with an ILS, giving instrument approach capability from that direction; runway 28 is not equipped with an ILS.
Published frequencies for Toussaint Louverture are: Approach/Departure on 119.8 MHz, ATIS on 132.075 MHz, Tower on 118.3 MHz, and Area Control on both 124.5 MHz and 134.15 MHz. The field's ILS serves the approach to runway 10.
The airport sits on the Cul-de-Sac Plain northeast of downtown Port-au-Prince, with the Baie de Port-au-Prince and the city itself providing a broad coastal and urban reference for pilots approaching from the west or south; the older, now-decommissioned Bowen Field lay closer to the bay near the Chancerelles area, distinguishing the current airport's more inland, northeasterly position.
The airport's origins trace back to Bowen Field, a small civilian and military airfield built near the Chancerelles area by the United States Marine Corps, which first stationed observation aircraft in the vicinity around 1919 and later, in 1942, built facilities to service Haiti Air Corps aircraft monitoring German activity in the region during the Second World War. Bowen Field handled mail services from 1943 and passenger services from 1944, and served as a US military airbase through the 1950s and 1960s before being decommissioned after 1994; its runway now forms part of Avenue Haile Selassie. The present airport, built further northeast with US grant funding supplemented largely by Haitian tax and lottery revenue, opened in 1965 as François Duvalier International Airport, named for the Haitian president of the day. It was renamed Port-au-Prince International Airport after Jean-Claude Duvalier's resignation in 1986, and renamed again in 2003 by President Jean Bertrand Aristide to honour Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution. The airport suffered significant damage in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, with a repaired arrivals terminal reopened by President Michel Joseph Martelly in November 2012. It was closed following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on 7 July 2021, and has since been repeatedly affected by gang violence, including an attack during the March 2024 Haitian jailbreak that shut the airport to commercial traffic and prevented the then acting Prime Minister from returning to the country.
Operations at Toussaint Louverture have been marked by repeated closures and reopenings amid ongoing gang violence in and around Port-au-Prince. Following the March 2024 closure, Haitian authorities cleared buildings around the airport perimeter to improve security, and the US military began flying cargo aircraft into the field from April 2024, moving equipment including supplies for the Haitian National Police. Civilian services resumed on 20 May 2024, with Sunrise Airways and the cargo carrier Amerijet restoring flights to Miami, but the airport closed again in November 2024 after aircraft came under gunfire, prompting a US Federal Aviation Administration restriction on US carriers operating in Haitian airspace below 10,000 feet. The airport reopened on 11 December 2024 following a successful test flight, with security reinforced by Haitian police, soldiers and Kenyan police supporting a United Nations mission. It closed again in November 2024 due to further violence, with commercial operations resuming on 12 June 2025 via a domestic Sunrise Airways flight. Most recently, on 23 November 2025, Sunrise Airways announced the temporary suspension of all flights to and from Port-au-Prince after one of its aircraft was reportedly hit by gunfire while taxiing. Pilots planning a flight to MTPP should treat the security and operational status of the airport as subject to rapid change.